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ing and the providence of Gon, because the one evidently implies the other. If Christ actually wrought miracles, and, after dying, rose from the dead, there must have been a power that enabled him so to do; and this must have been an intelligent, or a designing, and a benevolent power, the laws of nature having been changed for great and good purposes.

It is in vain for any person to say, as some how. ever have done, that till we are satisfied with respect to the being of a God, which, in the order of nature, is the first of all religious truths, it is to no purpose to inquire into the evidence of christianity. For though it be most convenient to teach, and to consider, any system of truths in a certain order, the discovery of them is altogether independent of that order. In this case, the first may be last, and the last first.

An Englishman, for example, may say, and plausibly enough, that he ought to understand his own country, before he explores any other. But it may happen that he shall be carried to Asia, Africa, or America, before he can have seen much of his own country, and thereby have a better opportunity of exploring them than his own. Or, considering the sun as the centre of our system

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he might fancy that, till we know what that great body is, it is absurd to give much attention to the planets, which depend upon it. But in this way he might live and die without acquiring any know: ledge of them at all. Even the several propositi ons in geometry may be learned in a very different order, as the different treatises on that branch of science evince, and yet be all equally well understood at the last. In like manner may men attain to the knowledge of God, and of his providence, without beginning with the study of them.

An atheist is a person who believes that there is no Being who established the present order of nature, but that all things have always been as they now are, and that all deviations from this order are absolutely impossible, and therefore incredible Consequently, any clear proof of an actual deviati on from this order of nature overturns his whole system. The atheist says that, since we must suppose something to have been uncaused, we may just as well content ourselves with saying that the present visible system had no cause, as suppose that something still greater than this system, and the cause of it, had no cause; since by ascending higher, we get no nearer to the solution of our great difficulty, viz. the cause of what exists But

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the proof of any miracle is decisively in favour of the actual existence of a power unquestionably above the common course of nature, and different from it. This is no less than a demonstration, that the reasoning of the atheist, however specious, is in fact wrong; and that, difficult as it may be to conceive the self-existence, as we say, of a Being greater than the visible universe, such a Being certainly does exist. I shall endeavour to make this argument still plainer by an illustration. **

Let a person unacquainted with clocks, watches, and other machines, be introduced into a room containing many of them, all in regular motion. He sees no maker of these machines, and knows nothing of their internal structure; and as he sees them all to move with perfect regularity, he may: say, on the principles of the atheistical system, that they are automata, or self-moving machines; and so long as all these machines continue in regular motion, and he knows nothing of the making of them, or the winding of them up, this theory may appear plausible.

But let us suppose that, coming into this room again and again, and, always attending to the ma-: chines, he shall find one of them much out of order, and at length its motion shall intirely cease;

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but that, after continuing in this state some time, he shall again find it in perfect order, moving as Will he not then conclude that some person, whom he has not seen, but probably the maker of the machines, had been in the room in his absence? The restoration of motion to the disordered machine would impress his mind with the idea of a maker of them in a much more forcible manner than his observing the regular construction, and uniform motion of them. It must convince him of the existence of some person capable of regulating, and therefore probably of making, these machines, whether he should ever see this person or not.

Thus do miracles prove the existence of a God in a shorter and more satisfactory manner than the observation of the uninterrupted course of nature. If there be a Being who can controul the course of nature, there must be one who originally established it, in whatever difficulty we may still be left with respect to his nature, and the manner of his. existence. We are compelled by a greater diffi. culty to admit a less, though acknowledged to be great. At all events, we see in miracles that there certainly exists a Being superior to ourselves, or any thing that is the object of our senses.

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And thus is demonstrated the wisdom of the general plan of divine providence, in ordering that the laws of nature should not always proceed without interruption, but in providing that the attention of mankind should sometimes be arrested by miraculous events; since they are eminently calculated to lead the minds of men to the consideration of a superior Being, as the cause of all events, ordinary and extraordinary. Thus also is evident the folly and ignorance of those who think all miraculous events to be so absurd, as to be in their own nature incredible, and therefore that no evidence in their favour can deserve the least attention. If the reverence of mankind for their maker be of any use, or of any consequence to their happiness, which undoubtedly it is, occasional miracles have the greatest propriety, and therefore great antecedent credibility, though all the particu lar facts require very circumstantial evidence, be cause they are not of frequent occurrence,

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I now come to draw some practical inferences from the doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus,

Such is the evidence of the resurrection of Jesus, exclusive of the general evidence of christiani ty, or of the miracles of Jesus, and those of the apostles after him, which are also another confirm

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